name puzzle

[calimac]

So there's this guy on TV a lot who's called Louis C.K. I don't know much about him, but I do know that he adopted that form of name in an attempt to get people to pronounce his Hungarian surname, Székely, approximately correctly.

Which affords me an opportunity to ask a question I've wondered about before: why is it that people so often consider the pronunciation of their name to be inviolate, while the spelling is infinitely malleable to accommodate it? Why is the pronunciation "real" and the spelling is not, when you have to go to a lot of trouble to change the spelling, whereas if Louis had wanted to change the pronunciation of his name to "zeh-kelly" he wouldn't have had to do anything at all.

Then there's this guy.

Comments

[thnidu.livejournal.com]

Wow, that's amazing. Thanks, thanks! I've put it onto the talk page, credited to "an acquaintance".

I'm not adding it there now, but the diary and Charles's annotation also tell us the interesting and surprising names of his grandfather, and his parents: Ghu Gilbert Le Guin, second of the seven children of James M. and Cinderilla [sic] Vashti [!!] Bridges Le Guin.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

There were some great names back then. I collect U.S. Senators, and two of my favorites, both of that generation, are Xenophon Pierce Wilfley and the crashingly anticlimactic Andrieus Aristieus Jones.